Making David into Goliath

How the World Turned Against Israel

Joshua Muravchik

• Publisher: Encounter Books
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781594038457
• eBook ISBN: 9781594038464
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

During the Six-Day War of 1967, polls showed that Americans favored the Israelis over the Arabs by overwhelming margins. In Europe, support for Israel ran even higher. In the United Nations Security Council, a British resolution essentially gave Israel the terms of peace it sought, and when the Arabs and their Soviet supporters tried to override the resolution in the General Assembly, they fell short of the necessary votes.Fast forward 40 years and Israel has become perhaps the most reviled country in the world. Although Americans have remained constant in their sympathy for the Jewish state, almost all of the rest of the world treats Israel as a pariah.What caused this remarkable turnabout? Making David into Goliath traces the process by which material pressures and intellectual fashions reshaped world opinion of Israel. Initially, terrorism, oil blackmail, and the sheer size of Arab and Muslim populations gave the world powerful inducements to back the Arab cause. Then, a prevalent new paradigm of "social justice,” in which class conflict was supplanted by the noble struggles of people of color, created a lexicon of rationales for taking sides against Israel. Thus, nations can behave cravenly while striking a high-minded pose in aligning themselves on the Middle East conflict.

Notes

Chapter 1

1 Conor Cruise O’Brien, The Siege: The Saga of Israel and Zionism (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986), 152.

2 Paul Johnson, A History of the Jews (New York: Harper and Row, 1987), 427–8.

3 Ibid.

4 Walter Laqueur, A History of Zionism (New York: MJF Books, 1972), 189.

5 Ibid., 202.

6 Ibid., 189.

7 Ibid., 452.

8 Robert J. Donovan and the Staff of the Los Angeles Times, Six Days in June: Israel’s Fight for Survival (New York: New American Library, 1967), 18.

9 Kenneth O. Morgan, Labour in Power 1945 to 1951 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), 208.

10 Quoted in Allis Radosh and Ronald Radosh, A Safe Haven: Harry S. Truman and the Founding of Israel (New York: Harper, 2009), 113.

11 Ibid., 101.

12 Ibid., 47.

13 Ibid., 94.

14 Quoted in Ibid., 34.

15 Ibid., 129, 148.

16 Ibid., 95.

17 Donovan et al., Six Days, 18.

18 Klaus-Michael Mallmann and Martin Cuppers, Nazi Palestine (New York: Enigma, 2010), trans. Krista Smith, Kindle edition loc. 636–45.

19 Mallmann and Cuppers, Nazi Palestine, Kindle loc. 693–96.

20 Cruise O’Brien, Siege, 251.

21 Jeffrey Herf, Nazi Propaganda for the Arab World (New Haven: Yale University, 2009), Kindle edition loc. 1102–7.

22 Herf, Nazi Propaganda, Kindle loc. 2803–7.

23 Clifton Daniel, “Zionists Ask U.N. to Pass New Plan; Arabs Inflamed,” New York Times, Sept. 2, 1947, 1.

24 Thomas J. Hamilton, “Arabs Call Palestine Report Source of Third World War,” New York Times, Sept. 9, 1947, 2.

25 Associated Press, “Arab Rejection of ’47 Partition Plan Was Error, Palestinian Leader Says,” New York Times, Oct. 28, 2011.

26 Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Israel’s Foreign Relations: Selected Documents 1947–1974, Meron Medzini, ed., 1976, 704.

27 Hassanain Haykal, “An Armed Clash with Israel is Inevitable-Why?” reprinted in Walter Laqueur, ed., The Israel-Arab Reader, 3rd ed., (New York: Bantam, 1976), 178.

28 “Nasser’s Speech to the Arab Trade Unionists, May 26, 1967,” in Laqueur, Israel-Arab Reader, 176–77.

29 Howard M. Sachar, A History of Israel: From the Rise of Zionism to Our Time (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), 625.

30 Ibid.

31 Cruise O’Brien, The Siege, 409.

32 Thomas S. Brady, “Arabs Voice Confidence,” New York Times, May 21, 1967, 3.

33 Donovan et al., Six Days, 45.

34 M. S. Handler, “Donations Pour In For Israel Fund,” New York Times, June 9, 1967, 11.

35 “10 From U.S. to Do Jobs Of Mobilized Israelis,” New York Times, May 26, 1967; “38 U.S. Jews Off To Israel To Help: Will Fill Reservists Places—Big UJA Drive Due,” New York Times, May 31, 1967.

36 Maurice Carroll, “Supporters of Israel March Here as the Police Turn Away Arab Group,” New York Times, May 29 1967, 4; Irving Spiegel, “Jews in Capital Turn Aid Rally Into a Victory Demonstration,” New York Times, June 9, 1967.

37 Louis Harris, “The Harris Survey: U.S. Public Shows Sympathy for Israel in Mideas...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Preface to the Paperback Edition
• Introduction
• One: When Israel Was Admired (Almost) All Around
• Two: The Arab Cause Becomes Palestinian (and “Progressive”)
• Three: The Uses of Terrorism
• Four: The Power of Oil
• Five: The Arabs Take Over the United Nations
• Six: Europe’s Socialists Go Third World
• Seven: Edward Said Conquers Academia for Palestine
• Eight: Israel Shows a Less Endearing Face
• Nine: Israel Spawns Its Own Adversary Culture
• Ten: On the Wrong Side of the Left’s New Paradigm
• Eleven: Israel in the Dock
• Conclusion: Israel Imperiled
• Notes
• Index